The Small Business Guide to Crowdsourcing a Design Project
For the first 6 months of my blog’s life I didn’t have a logo.. I just used its title The Social Media Guide.
Literally.. just the words “The + Social + Media + Guide“.
As time went on, it got to a point where I wanted to take my blog to a different level. I wanted my blog to stand for something.. to be recognised and to be associated with the topics and content I cover.
My blog needed branding and it needed to be different somehow from other blogs in my niche.
To achieve that, one of the first things I needed was a logo.. and this post describes the steps I took.
Crowdsourcing
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term crowdsourcing.. it is essentially outsourcing a task or a job, to a community or crowd.
I’ve got no skills whatsoever when it comes to logo design..
What I needed was an expert designer, someone who designs for a living.. so I decided to crowdsource it.
99 Designs
99 Designs is widely recognised as the number 1 marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design. They connect 77,000+ designers from around the globe with small businesses who need design projects completed.
You can get pretty much anything designed, including,
- Custom-made logos
- Web page design
- Twitter backgrounds
- Banner ads
- Buttons and icons
- WordPress themes
- Stationary design
- QuickBooks form design
- Print design
- T-shirt or clothing design
- Graphic design
And there is a 100% money back guarantee.
How it Works
It is very simple to get something designed.
1. Launch your design contest
Create a design brief which is simply a clear outline of what you need designed. You then post this brief to 99 Designsand set your prize amount.
2. Collaborate with the designers
Designers then submit concepts to compete for your prize. During this process, you provide continual feedback to help the designers deliver a concept you love.
3. Choose your favourite design
At the completion of your contest, you’ll need to pick your favourite design and award the prize. You’ll then receive the final design along with copyright to the original art work.
Ready Made Logos
They even have ready-made logos.
Choose a logo you like.. and they add your businesses name.
Simple.
Launching a Design Contest
When launching a design contest you need to specify certain requirements that the designers can work off.
Including a brief overview of your business, your brand’s name, your target audience and the requirements of the design.
Here is my design brief when I crowdsourced my blog’s logo,
Once your design contest has gone live.. designers will then start to submit designs based on your requirements.
Collaborating with the Designers
As the designs come in, you are encouraged to provide feedback to that particular designer.
I was always tweaking things.. asking designers to change the colour of this, re-position the text, change the font, improve this, didn’t like that, etc..
Slowly but surely moving toward a winning design.
Some designs that come in, are absolutely shocking! If that is the case, you can simply eliminate that design from the contest.
A lot are mediocore.. And some are worthy contestants.
Of the ones that you really like, you can rate them out of five stars.
You can then sort all the entries by number of stars.. leaving your favourites at the top of the pile. This is very useful as the contest progresses and you have many submissions.
From memory, my contest ran for about a week and in that time I received 185 entries,
And the Winner Is
When you have finally settled on a winning design, you simply click on <Award Prize> which effectively stops the contest, and notifies the designer that you have chosen their design as the winner,
Handover
Once you have determined the winning design, you and the designer need to go through the design handover process,
You will need to confirm that you want to award the prize to that designer,
Transfer Copyright
The first thing that needs to be completed is the transfer of copyright.
Both you and the designer need to (digitally) sign the copyright contract.
Firstly check that your details are correct.. then you will need to view the Intellectual Property Transfer Agreement.
After reading this, you will need to agree to the Intellectual Property Transfer Agreement by checking the check-box.. then click on <Sign Contract>,
You have now signed the contract.
Until both parties agree (and sign the contract), you are unable to progress and the designer doesn’t get paid,
Transfer Files
Next the designer needs to upload the final files for you to review,
Once the final files have been uploaded, you are then able to download them.
You then have several days to complete your review and ensure everything is as expected.. otherwise the prize money will be automatically released,
Once you have reviewed these files and are happy, check the check-box and click <I Accept>.. to release payment,
The funds that were held in escrow by 99 Designs are released to the winning designer.
Handover is Complete
That’s it.. everything is done!
Both parties have signed the copyright contract, you have reviewed the final product and released final payment to the winning designer,
A copy of these files can always be re-downloaded again from your 99 Designs account.
If you can’t do it yourself.. crowdsource it!
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11 Comments
Hey Matthew,
Thanks for profiling your experience with 99designs.
99designs was started by designers for designers – one of the over arching principles behind the site was to level the playing field for designers all over the world.
Since our launch over 50,000 projects have been run and over $13,000,000 handed out to the community – a significant portion of which to places where people previously did not have many opportunities.
Critics often point to the fact that there is usually only one winner and the rest just waste their time. However, this completely discounts one of the main reasons why designers participate in the projects in the first place. Many of them are simply looking for real projects to work on so they can hone their skills – this is incredibly powerful at 99designs.
Also – a freelancer is essentially a business owner. Any business owner needs to invest time/money to grow their businesses. Marketing is a huge part of this. 99designs provides an alternative way for designers to reach out to new customers. Rather than spending time and money marketing themselves, designers sell themselves doing what they love – designing.
They are not going to win every project – but the ones the do win often lead to lasting customer relationships and follow on work. In fact, many designers report that they get contacted for work directly regardless of winning projects.
Surely, this topic generates a lot of emotion and 99designs is not perfect. But after two years of learning in this business we continue to improve the value we provide to both designers and clients alike.
Cheers,
Jason Aiken
99designs.com
Thanks very much for the comment Jason.
Nice showcase for 99 Designs. I think there's 2 sides to crowdsourcing. As the sourcer, it's unrivaled for value, but if you're the designer the chances are you may spend time on a project for no return. If a designer is uncomfortable with that idea they shouldn't enter the contest.
Very true
In this case you are labeling exploitsourcing crowdsourcing. You are exploiting the crowd. Not ethical in one bit.
I can spot many cases of blatant stolen work in the 'contest' you ran. Perhaps even the one you picked.
Thanks for the comment.
So you are saying that 99 Designs are exploiting designers, who willingly opt-in and compete against their peers for cash, and a chance to further their portfolio?
And that companies like Wall St Journal, Forbes, New York Times, Good Morning America who have reviewed 99 Designs are also contributing to this exploitation – http://99designs.com/press/news
Shame on 99 Designs for providing a platform of employment for thousands of designers??
For you this worked great. For 184 of the 185 designers who submitted designs but didn't get paid, the process sucked. Assuming an even distribution of projects, your $350 payment translated to less than $2 per design. Crowdsourcing is working right now because people still believe that their design will get picked. When enough come to understand the odds, either prices will get bid back up, or the crowds will thin down to 5 or 10 kids who are using your logo project to complete their design school assignment.
Thanks for the comment. Great to see another designer's input.
A couple questions for you..
Are your skills as a designer good enough to win a design contest on 99 designs?
If you were a winning designer would you accept full payment from a client like myself.. or would you divide it equally amongst the remaining 184?
I'm not really convinced by crowd sourcing yet. It seems like a great idea for the "client" but less so for the "designer".
Whats good about it is, as you say, you get to pick and choose the concepts which you like from a wide range, then feedback to the designer with any amends during the process until you are happy with what has been presented to you, then you pick your winner. Then you pay them.
The bad side of it is that you are essentially asking anyone submitting work to do it at a cost of their time along with fees. The submissions that you discard early probably don't have much time spent on them, but it's time none the less. Really this issue applies more for the submissions that last a little longer in the process, receive your feedback and amends, developing their work until eventually you pick another design you think is more worthy.
For me, at the moment, crowd sourcing seems to heavily devalue the time, thought process (this being the most important part of the job, not the ability to use photoshop etc) and value of the designer, of course, it is the designers choice to take part in projects like this but it does seem heavily weighted to one side of the situation.
Then again I could be missing something from the whole process?
Thanks for the comment and points taken, always good to get a balanced view.
What is to say a designer doesn't have many fingers, in many different pies, all at the same time?
Is it not probable that a skilled designer wins more than they lose?
Liking crowdsourcing or not is a personal preference.. but I don't see it going away any time soon.
IMHO, quite the opposite..
Thanks for replying Matthew.
Having thought about what you said I'm thinking that having fingers in many pies, working multiple projects is a side issue that isn't really related.
By having many projects on, and lets presume they are all crowd sourced, what that would mean is that you are just working more. Not more efficiently, not more effective, not for greater value, just working more.
And who would be to say that of all those projects you get involved with, you don't end up being one of the 184.
Which leads onto your next point of a skilled designer winning more projects. That could well be true depending on the pool of contestants but in terms of winning a job, does a 1 in 185 chance sound like a good deal to you? Also to some degree questioning the skill of the designer isn't really relevant, its another distraction of the issue.
If you combine that with the 12 other projects you are working on, what would be your real odds of landing that win, in order to make a decent living? Seems to me a devaluation of the designer and the industry.
But its true what you say, if you don't like the rules, don't play. I also don't see crowd sourcing disappearing soon, but I don't really feel that it holds that kind of integrity that is needed.
Thinking about it a little further while I write this, there is one angle where it can benefit both sides, and that is with students. Often needing to develop their experience in both skill of design and the surrounding aspects of the general day-to-day it does give an opportunity for them to grow, with the prize money being an added bonus to them, even if the money was the main reason for them being involved in the first place.
Anyway, all interesting stuff to hear the different views coming forward and certainly not something to get too worked up over, as entries are a matter of choice!
Thanks,
Neil